RE: Fascism: Left Until It's Right
Thank you very much for your well-considered response. It means a lot to me that you'd take the time.
You make some very salient points, many of which I can't present immediate disagreement. I meant not to imply that the radical response to the Entente's unparalleled destruction of Germany is directly responsible for Nazism, for example, but rather as a presentation of parallel occurances. But their place in history goes oft ignored, and those parallel occurances were something I deemed important to share at a time where certain elements of fascism are taken out of context or blown out of proportion, while others are outright ignored.
I also think it's extremely important to consider the core elements of fascism alongside the elements which presented themselves in specific cases. You address xenophobia, for example, but Italian Fascism had no xenophobia to speak of until Hitler made Mussolini little more than a figurehead. Also, you attempt to conflate Jim Crow with Christian America, when at that time there was no such thing as a non-Christian America. In fact, until after World War 2, the two predominant political parties were better predictors of religious factions than anything else -- Catholicism on the Left and Calvinism on the Right could be assured in better than 80% of all State polls.
And to your point of isolationism and nativism being acts of an irrational society, I at the same time agree and disagree. On the one hand, President Trump appears to have a double standard when it comes to his economic policies -- asking Canada to remove sanctions for the better of Canada while asserting sanctions for the better of America -- but there is also a lot of cruft and buildup from decades of political decisions which require an amount of isolation to fix. I also cannot agree that he's nativist; he has not opposed immigration, only illegal immigration. He wants workers coming into the country, not welfare recipients, and as crude as it might make me seem from text alone, I would stand to agree.
Fascism is perhaps the most difficult ideological expression to define; the best historians seem to knowingly contradict themselves when discussing it, and make clear that they're aware of their contradictions of statement. I do not profess to be a master in the study of fascism... I'm just a person on the internet sharing my observations through the art of words.
But regardless, I appreciate you taking the time to offer your perspective on the matter. These are discussions that need to be had, and all perspectives need to be shared. You've also given me a lot to consider in my research.